


Stars in a Bottle

by catlike



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cold War, F/M, Fluff, So much shameless fluff, whouffle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23332360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catlike/pseuds/catlike
Summary: Keeping the Doctor still is like trying to catch stars in a bottle, Clara thinks. He’s something that just can’t be contained, his energy spilling over, electric and crackling and begging to be back in the sky.Which is a bit of a problem, considering he and Clara are currently stuck in a sub, miles and miles down under the sea.(A follow up to the Series 7 episode, Cold War, which ends with the Doctor and Clara being trapped on a submarine until they reach the TARDIS at the South Pole.)
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, The Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Clara Oswin Oswald
Comments: 19
Kudos: 151





	Stars in a Bottle

Clara stands atop a surfaced submarine, surrounded by a sea of half-sunken icebergs. There’s snow flurries fluttering softly in the air like white feathers and wind whipping against her pale blue party dress, and up in the sky, there’s a silver Ice Warrior spaceship, flying away.

But never mind that. Clara’s more interested in why, when the Doctor promised her Vegas, the TARDIS dumped them onto a sinking submarine and then disappeared, like some sort of twisted version of ding-dong-ditch.

“Where’s the TARDIS? You never explained,” Clara asks him now, and the Doctor glances at her a bit shiftily, before edging away as if he’s afraid of a scolding.

“I’ve been tinkering, adjusting some settings. I’m _allowed_ ,” he tells her, adding on that last sentence a bit defensively when Clara raises an eyebrow.

“What did you do?”

“I reset the HADS.”

Clara stares at him blankly. She has no idea what the HADS is, other than she’s pretty sure - no, scratch that - _definitely_ sure he shouldn’t have been tinkering with it in the first place.

“The Hostile Action Displacement System,” he explains. “If the TARDIS thinks it’s under attack, it relocates. Which is why the TARDIS is now at...”

The Doctor’s next words come out in a low, half-mumble under his breath, like maybe if he says them quietly enough, Clara can’t hear him, and if she can’t hear him, then she can’t be mad at him.

His plan’s not working.

“Doctor,” Clara says, “ _where’s_ the TARDIS?”

”She’s at the pole.”

“Right. Not far, then.”

He wrinkles his nose, “The _South_ Pole.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

“I see now.”

“You do, don’t you?”

And with that, the Doctor turns, and just like he’s simply using a deep sea Uber, he stares at the submarine captain and asks, “Can we have a lift?”

#

Clara sits in her small submarine cabin and sighs, rubbing her temple and closing her eyes.

By all accounts, the Doctor was handling being stuck on the sub better when its lights were flashing bright red and there was an Ice Warrior who wanted them all dead. That, at least, was dangerous, and dangerous was _exciting_ , so dangerous was something the Doctor could handle.

Boredom, he could not.

He’d already created a “disco” setting for the warning lights, invented a rather ominous looking tea kettle out of bits from a broken welding iron, and tried to increase the sub’s speed by something called “a klavnic knot.” All this eventually led to the Captain suggesting that the Doctor retire to his cabin indefinitely or be shot through the head.

The Doctor‘d had to think about it for a long minute.

But now he‘s here with her, in this too-grey, too-small of a room, and the both of them sit side-by-side on the hard edge of the narrow, metal bunk, and stare straight ahead at the windowless wall.

“You promised me Vegas,” Clara says.

“I know.”

A beat, and then, “This isn’t Vegas.”

”Trust me,” the Doctor says, glowering at the wall, “I _know_.”

Clara laughs and then shudders, suddenly chilled. The pretty, filmy but flimsy fabric of her vintage dress she’d picked out seems like a bad choice, in hindsight, and Clara frowns ruefully as she distinctly remembers coming across a forest-green, fur-lined parka while in the TARDIS wardrobe and tossing it aside.

Why, oh, _why_ , had she done that? 

(Well, probably because she thought she was going to be partying in Vegas, and one simply did not wear parkas when one went partying in Vegas.)

Goose bumps blossom down her arms, so Clara crosses them, folding them against her chest, trying to keep warm, and then, to her surprise, she sees the Doctor’s stopped watching the wall and is looking at her now instead, frowning in that worried way of his that makes his eyes look ten-thousand-years-old.

“What?” she asks, but instead of replying, he moves, standing and slipping his arms out of the sleeves of his long, deep purple coat, and then he leans down, gently draping it over Clara’s shoulders, and she feels the warm weight of his hands lingering along her arms just for a moment as he does.

“Better?” he asks.

His coat is much too big and far too long for someone as short as she is, and Clara’s overcome with the sensation that she’s a caterpillar, bundled up inside of a fabric cocoon. The ends of the coat sleeves go beyond the tips of her fingers, and the hem of it falls past her heels to brush against the floor, but the tweed is soothing and soft and wraps her in warmth, and Clara thinks she’s never worn anything cozier in her life.

”Better,” Clara agrees, as she snuggles down deeper inside. “Thank you, but don’t you need it?”

The Doctor makes a harrumphing, dismissive sort of noise, as if Clara’s made another silly suggestion again, like he did that one time she compared time streams to strawberry jam. “‘Course I don’t.”

Clara’s eyes sweep over him, taking in his woven waistcoat and white shirtsleeves. She doesn’t see how he can possibly stand it, how he’s dealing so easily with the freezing, icy air, when just the idea of giving up the coat makes her shudder again, a full body one that travels all the way down to the tips of her toes, and causes the Doctor to reach out and take her hand in his.

“Like ice,” he murmurs, closing his other hand over hers and rubbing it, briskly but gently, trying to get some heat back into it. “ _Humans._ Your lot has such terribly inconvenient body temperatures. Wouldn’t last a day picnicking in the Arctic without protection.”

“Who would do a thing like that, anyway?”

“The abominable snowmen, for one. Oh, they’ve got such good inner temperature, Clara, they can frolic on the ice floes for days without catching a cold. I should take you to meet their clan. Well,“ he pauses there, rethinking that. “They’ve got good temperatures, but not so much good _tempers_. So, on second thought, no, maybe we won’t visit them after all.”

Clara hums in agreement, listening as the Doctor continues to talk about this and that and then change his mind all within the time it takes for her to inhale, and when he’s done, she asks, “How are you _not_ cold?”

“Ah,” he says, and she can already hear so much smugness packed into the one tiny word. “Time Lord biology. I’m perfectly adaptable to both lower and higher temperatures. Gallifreyan bodies,” he informs her, “are far superior to human bodies’.”

“Seriously? _Superior_?”

”In every possible way.”

“How do you explain that chin, then?”

He huffs at her, and then clucks, muttering something indignantly under his breath that sounds like a mixture of _ungrateful minx_ and _shut up._

But he doesn’t let go of her hand.

#

Keeping the Doctor still is like trying to catch stars in a bottle, Clara thinks. He’s something that just can’t be contained, his energy spilling over, electric and crackling and begging to be back in the sky.

Right now he’s a moving blur of long, tangled limbs as he flaps his hands and talks and plans, his mind already far beyond the confines of the sub.

“We can still go to Vegas,” he tells Clara. ”Vegas in nineteen-eighty-nine, in fact. Neon lights against the night sky. Firework shows and fireball drinks, dance floors and disco balls, and everywhere you go, people hoping for a little thing called _luck_.”

He plops down beside her suddenly, slinging his arm over her shoulders, “Or, alternatively, Vegas in three-thousand-thirteen, when anti-gravs are all the rage, and the Vegas strip levitates. Gives a whole new meaning to _walking on air._ Or, an alternative to the alternative: we don’t choose a Vegas, we choose _both_ Vegases. Well, same Vegas, different points in time. But the _question_ is, Clara Oswald, which one first?”

Clara tilts back to peer up at him, and she feels his arm adjust around her, letting her lean back, but not letting her go. 

“I think,“ she says, trying to contain a smile, “that we’d better get off the sub first.” 

He huffs, “Practical spoilsport.” 

#

Later, Clara catches the Doctor attempting to slip out the door.

“Doctor,” Clara says warningly, still wrapped up in his coat, nearly tripping on its hem as she rises to stop him, ”didn’t the Captain put you on cabin arrest?”

The Doctor flaps his hand, as if he can simply wave away her concern, and since he’s holding his sonic screwdriver as he does this, he sends its bright neon light flashing around the room.

“Clara, please,” he says, “it’s your day off, stop _nannying_.”

“Excuse me?” Clara raises an eyebrow. She’ll stop nannying when _someone_ stops acting like a child that needs a nanny, thank you very much. 

“I’ll skip out for just a mo.”

“Doctor, I think you should stay in here.”

“It’ll be fine.”

Clara eyes him skeptically, doubt written out across her face, but he ignores it.

Instead, he places his palm against the curve of her cheek, and leans forward to press a swift kiss to her forehead, his thumb brushing lightly along her cheekbone as he does.

“You worry too much,” he tells her blithely, and Clara thinks he means his words to be soothing, but they really just make her think he’s up to something shifty.

“I think I worry the proper amount,” Clara counters, but the Doctor’s already merrily slipping away, out of her grasp, closing the door behind him and heading down the corridor.

It’s not even a full fifteen minutes later when Clara hears the sound of the sonic and then something that sounds suspiciously like falling metal, followed by garbled shouting and the sharp click of a handgun’s safety being released. There’s silence for a second after that, and then Clara hears rapid, clumsy footsteps headed back toward the cabin.

The door opens, the Doctor scuttles inside, and Clara tries not to smirk as he quietly announces:

“I think I should stay in here.”

#

Clara sits with her chin resting on her hands, watching the Doctor, who’s holding the sonic screwdriver uncomfortably tight and flickering its green light as he stares up at the lightbulb in a way she doesn’t quite like. Before he can sonic it to be brighter or darker or turn it into a lava lamp or whatever the despairingly bored Time Lord is thinking of doing, Clara decides to distract him.

“Tell me about something,” she commands.

“Tell you about what?” he asks, and he sounds both curious and confused by her request, but he still hasn’t looked away from the light.

“A fact, a story, anything,” Clara says. “You’re a thousand years old. There must be something you can talk about. Space trivia. Urban myths. The first place that you visited. Last girl that you kissed.”

Now _that_ catches his attention, Clara notices. At her last sentence, his head snaps down and he swivels around to stare at her in surprise.

“Oh,” Clara says, grinning now. “It was some kiss, then, was it?”

He opens his mouth and then shuts it, indignant.

“See,” Clara says smugly, “knew it was a snog box.”

“Shut up,” he finally says, and Clara notices a faint dusting of pink right across his cheeks.

“You blushed,” she says delightedly, and then she frowns, and he stares at her oddly, like she’s some sort of cipher he can’t figure out. And there’s something _she_ can’t quite figure out either, because somewhere deep in the back of her mind, there’s a dark sense of déjà vu and a nagging notion that she’s said those words to him before.

But she couldn’t have.

She’s positive.

It isn’t possible.

Being trapped under the ocean must be doing things to her mind.

“Come on, tell me about her,” Clara says, pushing those hazy, bothersome thoughts away, and turning her attention back to the Doctor. “Where’d you meet this girl?”

“London,” he answers, and though he’s there beside her, he looks faraway. “It was snowing. There were snowmen. She -“ he pauses, looks over at Clara, down at her dress, and he looks like he’s halfway out of the past, halfway into the present, as he almost inaudibly says, “She wore a blue dress too.”

Clara listens to him carefully, watches intently, but there are too many layers in his voice and emotions flashing over his face for her to fully decipher. As soon as she sees sadness in his eyes, she catches a glimpse of wonder, and then past that there’s grief and determination and hope and, more than anything, the look of a man trying to solve something he just can’t understand.

“Was she nice, this girl?” Clara asks quietly.

He looks down at the floor, “Yes, yes she was. She was nice and brave and clever and far better than me.”

“Nah,” Clara teases. “That’s impossible, no one’s better than you.”

He looks up at her, “You’d be surprised.”

They sit in silence for a minute, and then Clara asks, “So what happened to her? Is she still alive?”

The Doctor stares at her, searches her eyes, and ever so softly, he says, “Sometimes I think she is.”

Clara nods, not knowing why she feels like she’s going to smile, but also going to cry.

#

The Doctor’s dealing with his bored, listless energy by relentlessly rapping his hand against metal, the rise and fall of his fingers rhythmic like rain.

It’s driving Clara _insane._

She’s trying to read a book she’s found in the cabin. The book’s not interesting, really. It’s something to do with Russian history and is as dusty as it is long, but there’s not much else to do, and at least it’s a novelty to think that, technically, she’s reading a book in Russian even if it’s all being translated into English for her. 

But Clara can’t concentrate with that constant, infernal tapping.

“Doctor, _stop_ ,” she says sternly. 

Without looking up from her book, Clara reaches her hand out and lays it on top of his, the pads of her fingers pressing against the back of his hand, pulling it down and pinning it lightly in place in-between them.

The Doctor stills under her touch, the cabin falling silent, his swirling sea of restless energy starting to calm, and then slowly, she feels his hand move beneath hers, rotating and repositioning so that they’re palm to palm, holding hands.

Amused, Clara’s eyes flicker up from her book to look at him, but he’s not looking at her. He’s staring somewhere up at where the ceiling meets the wall, and Clara wonders if he's even noticed their entwined hands at all.

Holding her hand must’ve been some sort of automatic, unconscious response, she realizes as she watches him, because he’s off lost in thought, counting the bolts in the room or mentally reciting the numbers of pi, or whatever it is bored Time Lords do.

At least he’s quiet, she thinks, and goes back to her book, her eyes taking in the faded, narrow print on the page.

She makes it a whole four paragraphs more before she senses his absent-minded energy surging again, and he starts shifting restlessly.

Then she feels the soft brush of his thumb moving up, gently ghosting across her skin.

Clara’s breath catches, caught somewhere beneath her collarbone, and there’s surprise in her eyes before slowly, she exhales, convinced it was all a mistake. But then he does it again, his thumb drifting up, absently tracing a circle on the soft, inner center of her wrist, and Clara finds she can’t concentrate, not with the way his fingers are slipping beneath the sleeve of her coat and skimming over her skin and how there’s something like a shiver starting down her spine.

She’s still facing her book, but her eyes flutter shut, and she tries to decipher what exactly it is that he’s drawing out on her wrist.

At first it feels like maybe he’s mapping something, some invisible, ethereal, navigational chart that only he can see, or sketching out stars on her skin. But then she feels the pad of his thumb softly sweeping something smaller and circular over her, and the movement feels less like a constellation string and more like cursive, making Clara think that maybe what he’s doing is writing invisible words.

“What language is that?” Clara finally asks, and though there’s curiosity in her voice, her sentence comes out hushed, barely above a whisper. This moment is something soft, something fragile, and Clara’s afraid that simply speaking will shatter it.

The Doctor’s lips turn down in a frown, her words pulling him out of his thoughts and back into the world, and then he looks down at how their hands are intertwined in-between them and he blinks in surprise, his thumb brushing over her wrist once more before stopping, coming to rest right above her pulse-point.

”Sorry,” he says, confused and contrite. “Head in the clouds. Hadn’t realized.”

“It’s fine,” Clara answers, and she knows from where his fingers press, he can feel the fast, fluttering melody of her heartbeat, and she hopes he hasn't guessed that he’s the reason behind it. “Just tell me what it is.”

“It’s Gallifreyan,” he answers quietly. “A language so ancient it’s older than half the stars, and every bit as beautiful.”

Clara’s lips curve up at the corners, and her eyes flicker up to his.

“Show me,” she says.

He shrugs, “No pen and paper. No chalk either. Not even a tiny, table-top zen garden with a tiny rake to write in the sand with. This cabin is surprisingly lacking in resources.”

“Come on, Doctor,” Clara says, and she tugs him closer and then holds out her hand, palm up. “Just show me how you write it, I’d like to see.”

The Doctor hesitates, looking torn, but then, ever so slowly, his hand comes forward, and she watches as his finger moves in delicate, intricate curves, lightly tracing words onto her palm.

“What does that mean?” Clara asks, wondering what he’s spelled across her skin.

He laughs, ducks his head, and says:

“It means _Impossible Girl_.”

#

Clara’s aware that they’re sitting on a bunk and that there’s a pillow somewhere behind her, but she can’t be bothered to look for it, not when there’s a perfectly good Time Lord next to her to lean against instead. The aforementioned Time Lord is finally sitting contented and still, having taken over her book, the discussion of ancient Russian history fascinating him much more than it did her (likely, Clara thinks, because he was actually _there_ ), so she scoots over, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Tired,” she says, yawning. 

“Staring at a wall all day can be draining,” he says wisely.

“What about you? You don’t look tired at all.”

“I don’t sleep,” he says, turning another page of his book.

“Not _ever_?” Clara asks, not too sleepy to not be skeptical.

“Well, fine. Sometimes,” he amends. “I sleep _sometimes_.”

“Like when?”

“Like when people aren’t pestering me,” he says, and Clara swats his arm. ”I don’t need that much sleep, Time Lord biology is -“

“Superior in every way, yes, you've mentioned that.”

He looks up from his book and glances down at her, “Do you need the bunk? I can stand.”

Clara makes a small noise of disagreement. The smooth cotton of his shirt feels soft against her cheek, and he’s much more comfortable than she ever would have guessed, what with his gangly, flailing limbs.

Besides, he’d promised her Vegas and landed her here instead. The least he could do was sit still and be a pillow.

“Don’t move,” she says, curling in against him. 

“Clara,” he says lightly, and there’s amusement and terror and terrible fondness in his eyes as he watches her nuzzle her face against his waistcoat. “I don’t think -“

But he’s too late, Clara’s already gotten comfortable and is nestled into his side, holding him in place and firmly shutting her eyes.

“All right, you can stay,” he says, as if he actually has a choice in the matter. “But it’s not happening again. I’m no one’s personal pillow.”

“More like a personal space heater,” Clara mumbles saucily, half-asleep already.

”Watch it,” he warns, trying his very best to sound scolding and indignant, but Clara merely hums contentedly in response.

And as the soft tendrils of sleep overtake her, she feels his fingers gently running through her hair, and with both laughter and affection in his voice, he whispers, “Sleep well, Impossible Girl.”

#

Later, when Clara wakes up and rubs the sleep from her eyes, she finds her head‘s still curved against the crook of his neck, and her hand’s moved to rest right in the middle of his chest, in the center space between his two hearts, and she can feel their tandem tempo, beating out a rhythm beneath her fingers.

And the Doctor, well, he’s sleeping from what Clara can tell. His eyes are shut and he’s slumped over, half-sitting, half-sinking against the wall, and his left arm’s looped around her shoulders.

One side of Clara’s lips twitch up into a smile, and as if he can somehow sense her rising laughter, the Doctor wakes up, and he opens one eye, glancing at her with sleepy suspicion.

“Time Lords don’t sleep, hmm?” Clara can’t resist saying. “ _Superior_ biology.”

“Got bored,” he grouses, sitting and shifting them up. “There was nothing to do, not with you curled up on me like some sort of sleepy, clingy cat. Incredibly boring. _Completely_ boring. Body shut down as a defense mechanism against the lack of mental stimuli, that’s what it was.”

Clara nods solemnly, “Of course.”

“Shut up,” he grumps, but she swears she sees a hint of pale pink on his cheeks.

#

They’ve just gotten news that they’re surfacing and that soon they’ll be back with the TARDIS, and giddy with excitement, the Doctor takes out a giant, old map he’s found tucked under the bunk and tacks it up, spreading its paper green mountains and blue paper seas over the dull grey metal wall.

“Close your eyes, Clara,” he says, a delighted grin on his face, and when she does, she feels his hands wrap around her shoulders, and she laughs as he gently spins her in place.

“It’ll be just like pin the tail on the donkey, except _better_. Because any place your hand lands on the map, we’ll go,” he says, offering her the world as he twirls her around. “North or South, East or West, anywhere and everywhere, whenever you want.”

Finally, he stops spinning, positioning Clara in what she assumes is the space in front of the map. With her eyes still shut, she feels him lean down over her shoulder, and there’s a shiver that goes down her spine as his face falls next to her ear and he whispers, “All you have to do is _point_.”

So Clara points, her hand connecting with paper, and when she opens them, she finds the pad of her finger directly over a country.

“Peru,” she says, reading what she’s landed on and smiling.

“ _Peru_ ,” he echoes excitedly. “Good choice, Clara. Amazon rainforests and Andes Mountains and ancient Incan cities. Frogs and fog oases and cactuses and cloud-forest slopes.” And then he turns to her, his eyes glittering as he grins and says, “How would you like to be beside Hiram Bingham when he discovers Machu Picchu?”

And Clara grins back, because there’s a whole wide world waiting for them outside of this sub, and adventure’s only a breath away, and how lucky is she, to have this magic, mad, impossible man offering her the universe in the palm of his hand?

So, laughing, she reaches out for his hand and says, “Doctor, any point in time will do, as long as it’s with you.”

And as his fingers close around hers, he says:

“Likewise, Clara Oswald, _likewise_.”

And she knows it’s true.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I recently rewatched Cold War and the episode ends with the Doctor asking the submarine Captain for a ride to the TARDIS at the South Pole, like he’s simply using a deep sea Uber, and I thought, “I wish they had a short that showed how the Doctor and Clara dealt with being stuck in the sub.” Unfortunately, there is no short in existence and the universe cruelly made me write a fic about it myself. 
> 
> 2) I couldn’t resist mentioning the kiss from The Snowmen. Frankly, I’m miffed it never got referenced in canon again, and since this was just a wish-list of things I wished we got to see, I stuck it in. Talking about the last girl you kissed _to_ the last girl you kissed, while she’s got no idea that it was her and you’re trying to keep it that way is quite an awkward thing, sorry about that, Doctor. 
> 
> 3) 5’2” Clara wearing the 6’0” Doctor’s long purple coat is something else I really, really wanted to see. Forever mad it wasn’t on the show. So I decided that since I was already writing an incredibly self-indulgent fic, I’d add it in. 
> 
> 4) The title Stars in a Bottle came to me during my first draft, which is from a sentence I wrote, but it’s also a small reference to the fact that nearly the whole fic takes place in one tiny room, and in the TV world, an episode that’s scripted to shoot mostly on one set to save money is called a “bottle episode.”
> 
> 5) If you like what I wrote, come find me on Tumblr (username: clara-oswin-oswald), where I can usually be found screaming about my otp, Whouffle.


End file.
